Combat Data: VCD-2 Roter März

Model number: VCD-2
Name: Roter März
Classification: Vercingetorix-class destroyer
Manufacturer: Browning Engineering Corporation, from a Kazoku design
Operator: HALO
First deployment: CY 40
Crew: 6 command crew and up to 100 other passengers and crew standard; helmsman and 12 crew, skeleton
Keel: 180 meters
Beam: 45 meters
Draft: 23 meters
Base Weight: 4320 metric tons
Powerplant: Seed Corp Fusion reactor
Fixed armaments: 60 gigawatt laser, front-firing; axial railgun, fires 6 x 0.30 m 9-ton tungsten rods at 25 km/s or 0.30 cubic meter 75 kg aluminum blocks at 250 km/s
Propulsion: 2x main engine, 10x auxiliary engine, top speed 450,000 kph
Support craft: 4 combat frames and 1 small shuttle
Special equipment: Vercingetorix laser targeting system

Powerful though the One-series XSeeds were, they were mainly intended as the targeting system for an even more devastating weapon. That weapon was the Vercingetorix-class destroyer.

Commissioned by Sekaino Megami in the closing days of the Kazoku War, the Vercingetorix-class was envisioned as the basis of a vast fleet intended to sterilize the earth. Thankfully, only two ships of the line were produced. The second, designated VCD-2, remained in the earliest stages of construction until BEC president Tesla Browning completed the destroyer for his own purposes.That vessel would be delivered into the hands of student revolutionary Arthur Wake, escalating the nascent HALO Conflict to interplanetary scale.

Arthur christened his warship the Roter März after the ancient god of war and the month in which the vessel was first launched. Whereas the ship had originally been designed to neutralize earthbound weapon and defensive emplacements from space, Arthur inverted its purpose to strike at the space colonies.

A number of modifications made by Browning to the basic Vercingetorix design aided Arthur’s anti-Coalition terror campaign. All of the ship’s standard weapon emplacements–with the notable exceptions of the forward railgun and gigawatt laser–were stripped to make room in the shuttle hangar for up to four combat frames. Browning correctly reasoned that HALO’s four XSeeds acting as escorts would more than compensate for the reduction in fixed weapons. Roter März‘s main drives and generator were also enhanced beyond the already high-performance baseline to facilitate hit-and-run attacks. As a result, the ship could arrive at a target colony before its own kinetic projectiles.

The massive railgun which fired those projectiles–as well as a 60 gigawatt laser designed to soften up hard targets–was located below the main bridge between a pair of mandibles which made up the forward two-thirds of the vessel. Each mandible’s inner surface was lined with powerful electromagnets which drove and guided the railgun’s ammunition. This weapon could be configured to fire either telephone pole-sized tungsten rods or more compact yet faster aluminum cubes. Alternating fire from Roter März‘s laser and railgun could destroy a ten-kilometer-wide asteroid in less than one minute. By using an XSeed as an advance scout and slaving its laser targeting system to the ship, Roter März could strike unwitting targets from beyond normal sensor range.

Arthur gave direct command of Roter März to former EGE Major Alan Collins. The Kazoku War veteran captained the vessel ably, often seeking to temper Wake’s blood lust in the interest of the crew. Nonetheless, Collins’ relative restraint didn’t spare the Coalition citizens caught in the destroyer’s sights.

Collins was surely aware that as a destroyer, Roter März‘s original combat role would have been as an escort for an even larger craft. The veteran officer saw no need to concern himself with such trivial questions, though the destroyer’s ability to coordinate with combat frames despite originally having no CF capacity of its own hinted at an answer.

Once again, we have an interesting cast, political intrigue on a grand scale, and of course, big mecha battles that makes anime shows in the same vein look like amateur hour.